Good evening. I haven't been here for a while. I couldn't remember how to get in. I've lived here for 10 years. I lived in room 33, 10, 11, 12, top of the stairs, 45. And I lived across the street for 5 years. My daughter, who is 24 now, is still famous to this day for many people still mention the silent meals in the dining room. And the silence would be broken by my daughter's yelling out, Butter! Butter! But she didn't say tooth farewell, so it was more like, Buller! Well,

[01:08]

when I go to give a talk, I kind of try to get out of the way and let my muse do it. I'm kind of dependent on my muse that way. I don't try to figure it out so much ahead of time. So we'll see what happens, won't we? Sometimes nothing much happens, you know, and then that's too bad. And then sometimes something happens that's kind of embarrassing. And then sometimes it works pretty well. I've gotten kind of used to doing it this way, so that's the way it goes. And I pay the price. Anyway, I wanted to tell you a story tonight. First of all, many years ago at Tassajara, we were having tea with Suzuki Roshi and a student said to him, asked him, Why haven't you enlightened me? I thought this was kind of

[02:20]

a little embarrassing to me. It seemed a little disrespectful. It also seemed to put an undue amount of the burden on Suzuki Roshi. But you know, we're Americans, so we get to be impolite. Recently a friend of mine went to England with her mother and two sisters, four women. And then her mother, you know, they were coming out and saying they went to see the English patient. And then they're in the lobby and they're kind of walking along and English people are pretty quiet, you know. And this is what everyone says anyway. I haven't been there. But her mother says to the three daughters who were sort of scattered in a little range around in the theater, she says in a loud voice, Well, I couldn't have an orgasm in a closet. And then later they were

[03:20]

at Buckingham Palace. And they have a big exhibit of Winston Churchill, celebrating Winston Churchill. And her mother starts saying, Well, do you think that Winston Churchill actually wrote his own speeches? And my friend said, Well, yeah, I would think so. I mean, in those days, statesmen, that's a lot of why they were statesmen because they wrote their own speeches and people respected that. And so finally their mother wasn't quite convinced so she goes up to the guard. The woman is standing there and she says, Now, do you think, did Winston Churchill really write all of his own speeches or did he have actually a speech writer? And the guard said, Well, I expect he did. Anyway, we get to, you know, do this all over the world, this kind of thing. But anyway,

[04:21]

when Suzuki Roshi was asked, Why haven't you enlightened me yet? He said, I'm making my best effort. And politely enough, he didn't say, How about you? So, how about you? I don't mean are you making your best effort but are you asking a lot of yourself the way that, you know, because if you ask, the way you treat others is the way you treat yourself and how you treat yourself is how you treat others. So this person also asked a lot of herself. Usually we go around saying to our own body and our own mind, Gee, guess you haven't come up with

[05:23]

very good experiences lately. Couldn't you get me a better one? I'd like something more enlightening. I'd like it to be more calm and compassionate and kind. I don't want any of that other stuff that you keep coming up with. I'd like you to stuff it and give me some really brilliant spiritual kind of experiences. You know, most of us in Zen we're into the spiritual kind. It's a little hard on your body and mind and it can get kind of discouraging too. Because if you listen carefully to your body and to your mind it will tell you I just gave you a thought. I just gave you a feeling. I give you things to see and things to smell, things to taste. I give you an infinite variety of experiences moment after moment. What else do you want? But we're pretty demanding usually of ourselves

[06:25]

and consequently of others. So I've over the years I've been cultivating my own practice. I say my own practice because generally speaking in the context of Zen Center we expect a lot of one another and we have all these forms and then please be quiet and do this and do that and then what chance do you have? And then pretty soon we begin to think it extends to our mind and we should have a particular kind of mental experience as well as well in having our body in a certain shape we think well I better have my mind in a certain shape and we start trying to shape our mind so this is and then this can't be done. So it's kind of frustrating and painful.

[07:28]

It's painful to try to coerce or shape your mind. You've probably noticed this but anyway it's important to acknowledge it how painful it is to try to shape your mind and your experience then maybe you can let go of it and give your mind and body and your experience as Suzuki Yoshi said a large pasture, give your sheep or cow a large pasture. In this sense mind, your experience the world is like a beast a cow or a sheep it's pretty wild, it's unruly it's unmanageable, it can't be controlled so give it a big pasture. And in Zen we can allow a big pasture because we have the container of the practice so outwardly we have forms inwardly do what you feel like or what occurs to you.

[08:30]

Isn't that nice? Complete freedom just don't move. Ha ha ha Ahem Ahem Ahem So I want to talk a little bit I bring up this this story I brought up for various reasons

[09:31]

I want to tell you a kind of anyway Zen saying which I also appreciate which for me goes along with this story Ahem You've probably heard it take off the blinders unpack the saddlebags the blinders are what the horse has on so you can go straight ahead and you don't look around and you're definitely on your way somewhere So the Zen expression is take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags so usually once you arrive some place and you're willing to be where you are actually you don't have to unpack the saddlebags stuff will start tumbling out you've probably noticed this as soon as you are still something will tumble out and the saddlebags will start to unload and there's a lot of thoughts and judgments and anger

[10:34]

and rage and greed and desire and frustration and envy and sorrow and sadness and it's often quite mixed up So it's interesting you know we have to decide each of us we decide why are we here what are you doing why would you want to practice Zen why would you want to do anything and usually you know we have some mixed desire on one hand it would be nice if our life was just calm and peaceful and on the other hand it would be nice if we actually as Dogen says you know in the Genjokan your treasure store opened and you could spend it at will like in other words you came into your power into your life or Suzuki Roshi said

[11:34]

own your own body and mind you actually owned your own body and mind and your life flowed out of you or you know Thich Nhat Hanh says re-inhabit your life stop treating yourself stop colonizing yourself you know trying to rip off the raw materials and sell back some other stuff you know just like in that story haven't you come up with something better yet manufacture something better for me so you know it depends on what you're interested in but personally I'm interested in this is what I'm interested in I'm interested in encouraging people to do that also to come into your own life have your own power and you know

[12:36]

that your treasure store opens that you have accessible your creativity, your energy, vitality you know resourcefulness and it's yours to use and you can spend it so this is different than just you know thinking that you could do what you were supposed to and everything would come out okay sometimes I think you know if you're here tonight you know you must already have decided you know something about meditation for the long run I meet people just starting to meditate and then there's people who say well I think I'll try this meditation out I'll see how it goes and if it works out okay I'll do it and if it doesn't I'm out of here and then there's people who say I'm going to find out how to meditate it's a different kind of decision

[13:37]

isn't it so and as far as unpacking the saddlebags you know so also what's in the saddlebags is there's a difference between deciding ahead of time what your life is going to look like or should look like or is supposed to look like either according to you or to some people that you're hanging around with and having your life look the way it does and most of us are rather busy having our life look the way it should and so we don't have particularly time to touch our life the way it is and to touch our life the way it is we have to be what's necessary is to be present present and also the second part that's important is to be vulnerable or receptive and to be vulnerable and receptive and actually feel something or notice something in your life to be actually aware

[14:39]

and to be receiving your experience and no longer criticizing it is not good enough why haven't you done more for me lately why haven't you been more impressive and why haven't you astounded others and etc so actually to receive your experience we have to stop judging and criticizing and noticing and wondering about how well I'm doing what's wrong with those other people and then we can actually notice something and taste something in our life and something touches us and if we're quiet enough and receive something completely enough then that's called sacred or Buddha nature something real and you feel it in your core your core can vibrate at the frequency of touching another core of another being or the taste of something in your mouth or the sensation

[15:41]

of your breath and you can't be busy at that time saying how good or bad it is or comparing it to anything else so Zen interestingly as far as I can tell is both about touching things at the core being touched at your core Suzuki Roshi said Zen practice is to let your experience come home to your heart to let your experience come home to your heart my experience is this is anyway an activity something you do and also to let something actually touch your heart is very dangerous

[16:41]

if you've ever fallen in love you know how dangerous it is because when you let something touch your heart then you're vulnerable and you can hurt and you can have pain and you can have betrayal and what touches you can go away it's called in Buddhism Dukkha, suffering that something you love and has touched your heart disappears and yet the teaching of Buddhism actually is that to put an end to suffering is not to close your heart and wall yourself off from experience and see if you can handle everything at a distance and keep above it all but to actually receive things in your heart and let your heart respond so you also don't close off your capacity to respond with the fullness of your being which is actually

[17:49]

to do this kind of practice is something we spend then years finding out how to do because nobody does it that easily and well and it's a craft how to be open and receptive and receive the world and at the same time have limits and when to have limits and when not to have limits and how to articulate your life so a lot of the times we forget one side or the other some people are quite involved in the articulation of everything and how to do things in the right way and the wrong way and getting everything just right in the realm of experience and then they forget about letting things touch the core touch the heart and then other people think are very easily touched at the heart but then don't have a clue about how to orchestrate their life so it actually works well I don't want to talk too long tonight

[19:06]

I'm going to tell you a story a more everyday kind of a story a more colloquial kind of a story and it's a story for me that illustrates various things but I'll let it illustrate for you what it does but anyway I'll just say probably in the context of tonight I told you I trust my muse I trust this is another way of thinking about practice is how can you how is it to trust your own being can you trust your own being or do you have to decide decide and tell it what to do I always tell people if I do a cooking class do you tell your hands how to cut like you know better than your hands how to be a hand well you should move like this and then like this and then like this and that's the way you should do it and you tell your hands how to do it you could also invite your hands to find out how to cut

[20:06]

in a way that they really love that's completely different than telling your hands how to do it and most of us spend our whole lives telling our hands our arms, our legs, our chest, our heart you know what they're supposed to do next and we don't spend so much time inviting our being to express itself and to be there and to find out how to live we don't invite so much our heart would you please go ahead and find out how to be a heart and your hands can you ask your hands can you find out how to be hands and would you do what hands can do and love to do can I give you my permission a while back I was at a workshop and I'm pretty good with my hands I've kneaded bread and I can cut vegetables really well and I can do a lot of things with my hands

[21:07]

and I was at a workshop and I asked the person leading the workshop you know my wrists are very stiff I can't bend my hand back very far you know most people can get their hand back farther than that I put a stop to my basketball career for one thing it's hard to shoot a basketball you can't balance it here on your hand and you have to bend your arm back to get the ball to balance there I was too short anyway obviously so I asked him you know what about this he said why don't you just see what you can find out in the next day or so so the next morning I was sitting Zazen I noticed I didn't have hands my awareness just stopped right here right at the wrist does anyone wonder why my wrists are stiff and then

[22:08]

you know I told the person the next day at the workshop I said I noticed my hands my awareness of my body stops here at the wrist he said lots of people do in spiritual practice do that they cut off their hands why would you cut off your hands so you don't hurt anybody so most of us in spiritual practice we cut off a lot so we won't hurt anybody just to be on the safe side then the next thing I noticed I noticed that if I'm not aware of it my hands go like this you know where I'm sitting in the school that I'm studying when your hand goes like this that's I can't if your hand goes the other direction that's I can towards your thumb side so I was sitting here doing I can't according to this phenomenology you might believe this or not

[23:10]

heck I don't care but I noticed that if I actually did the posture and I put this hand on this hand and I have the knuckles on top of the knuckles and the tip of my middle finger comes right to the edge of my palm and the other fingers line up and I have my thumb here and I put my hands here perfectly in line with my wrist and I'm not doing I can't anymore and I'm not cutting off my hands and I have to have awareness in my hands to do that I thought that was pretty interesting but that's all on the side I'm trying to tell you you know you could ask your hands to find out how to be hands and you could ask your legs how to be legs and you could let them find out you could let your breath find out how to breathe instead of telling it be calm now does that ever bug you you know I'm sometimes doing cooking classes and I get intense and people say calm down Ed and then I tell them

[24:13]

after a while if they keep that up I say I'd rather you didn't tell me to calm down I don't mind if you tell me when you get upset like that I don't know what to do and it scares me when you're that intense I get scared when you get that intense I get scared instead of that they say calm down Ed you see the difference they're not owning it it's not like owning your own experience you just try to tell other people how to behave so that you don't have to have the experience that you're having change your behavior so I don't experience what's going on in me and then how much do you think you can do that with the whole universe huh oh but maybe you can get better and have some spiritual authority to back you up when you tell people how to behave that would be good wouldn't it a little enlightenment that's what I thought when I started practicing and I found out it doesn't go very far and then even so people will ask you why haven't you enlightened me yet so a lot of good it does

[25:16]

anyway you could ask your own body and being but the problem is I'm going to tell you about some of the problems now so you understand when you start asking yourself and asking your own body to find its own way and asking your mind to come up with what to say and what to do you know these are some of the problems you could have and this is the price you know there's a price to pay for this and I've been paying this price for a long time I know a lot about it so earlier this year a friend of mine asked me she comes to my meditation group in San Rafael on Thursday nights and she's the head of the Jewish Community Center's nursery school she asked me would I help with the benefit I said sure well I'm going to get some celebrity chefs that you're going to create a menu and then you'll cater this magnificent mingle that we're going to have and people will pay lots of dollars and they're going to come to this thing okay well now I know that my cooking is what I call rustic it's not chic refined, polished, it's not restaurant and I agreed to cook with some people who are restaurant tours

[26:18]

you know like Nancy Oakes from Le Boulevard it used to be La Venue you know the avenue out on Geary and then they moved downtown and became the boulevard and anyway I was going to so then it turned out she came back to me a while later and said well the magnificent mingle is going to be at Dianne Feinstein's house because her daughter Kathleen is the president of the JCC and so she and Richard have agreed to underwrite the catering of the magnificent mingle at their house so you just have to make the dessert now are you still willing to help so I thought okay I was getting a little nervous because I'm even less able to produce magnificent desserts than I am just magnificent food and I knew that whatever I made was going to be rather homey compared to chic productions but I thought I would risk it and I decided

[27:18]

to make a rhubarb strawberry tart cake there's a layer of tart dough on the bottom then there's a layer of rhubarb goo there's some strawberries and there's cake on top I tried it out, it worked great then two friends from my sitting group came over to my house and we were going to make dessert for 150 people and I started about 8 o'clock and about 2 o'clock you know the dessert started coming out of the oven and then they started cooling and then eventually I cut them up and then I went to scoop them out and the bottom, the tart part on the bottom stuck to the spatula and then the scoop comes out on the plate and then the tart is still on the spatula and I started getting really anxious they've all been done by this point some of them in the oven, some of them are cooling but there's no help for this at this point this is the way it's going to be and I started getting

[28:18]

extremely agitated this is my desserts compared to theirs and what will people think about me and how are they going to and I tried another one and it sticks and then I started getting upset and within a couple of minutes I was screaming and my friends from my sitting group they started doing this thing, calm down Ed it's not so important they're really tasty the desserts are really good they just don't look so good don't worry, it'll be okay and at that point at some point I say it's easy enough for you to say I'm the person who has to show up there with these desserts and serve them or see that they get served I'm the one who has to be there you guys are going home now

[29:19]

it's easy enough for you to say it's going to be okay I have to show up there with the cream of the San Francisco the richest level of the Jewish culture here in San Francisco Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blum the president of the JCCC, the vice president the chairman of the board of the Jewish synagogue out there Temple Emanuel I have to go and I'm going to have to be there and there's going to be all these exquisite desserts and then there's going to be my little dumpy dessert that's falling apart and so these two people from my sitting group made polite excuses and left, they got out of there really fast they were obviously extremely embarrassed at my outburst I would calm down when they were leaving, I'd say thank you very much

[30:20]

and I appreciate your help and then when they were at the door I'd start screaming again I tend to scream I tend to scream at the universe this is an ongoing study what do you scream at? mom? dad? the universe? the universe is like screaming at Buddha or Source anyway after a while my daughter came in and she said dad I really don't I really think you're kind of obsessed with this I don't think people who eat the dessert are going to be looking at it the way you do with your judgments and so on she was pretty nice about it I was starting to calm down by that point I made myself a cup of coffee and I lied down for a while, I took a nap and I had some coffee then I had to get ready to go and later my daughter said you know it's really kind of hard to respect somebody when they're behaving like that

[31:20]

and my daughter also complains that oh well I'm not supposed to tell you about that but anyway do you think the parents who never reveal any feelings or emotions are any better? I don't know but I've met a lot of people whose parents never felt a damn thing as far as they could tell and it's not known them much good either but anyway so I got on my best black dress and then I realized I have to get gas and I didn't want to have to get gas in my best black dress so I started looking for a gas station that's full service you know there's almost no full service gas stations I don't know where they are I couldn't find one out in Marin I couldn't find one

[32:21]

I came on into San Francisco I knew I had enough gas to get here into San Francisco and I thought if worse comes to worse I'll just go and get gas then I got to the bottom of Waldo Grade it was Saturday at 5.30 the traffic was backed up across the Golden Gate Bridge to the bottom of Waldo Grade if you've ever been over to Marin you know it's a mile and a half two miles it only took from 5.30 till oh I don't know 6.20 or something to get to the bridge I mean it took 35 40 minutes at least stop and go traffic I'm doing this for the love of it I'm sure you know I'm going to I have all these desserts that I'm going to be humiliated by and not only do I have to be humiliated by the desserts but I have to sit in this traffic and it's not something I would choose to do normally I got into town and I couldn't find the full service gas station so I went to a shell station out on Geary and I went and gave him $10 and he smiled at me

[33:24]

he was Chinese I think and he seemed to recognize me in some sense he seemed to be happy to see me anyway I pumped the gas and then I went to Diane's house Presidio Terrace right off of Aguayo so I brought my desserts in reparked the car came in in my black dress and there was Diane Feinstein and then they introduced me to Diane Feinstein and I said how nice to see you again because she came to Greens once or twice when Michael and I were there and other people and then how nice of you to help out with this whole event blah blah blah and then her husband Richard Blum showed up and so Richard was very pleased to see me because he's a fellow Buddhist and then he gave me a tour of the house and all the Buddhist art and the statues and things from Nepal and Thailand and Tibet and huge tankas and then he gave me a little ceramic symbol that I'm using as a hot plate now at my house and he seemed

[34:26]

terribly distracted aside from being in a certain way very friendly he was also very distracted and the next day it turned out he side swiped a car a parked car or something and he over jogged and over exercised his blood sugar was way down he went to the hospital anyway, who knows so then this whole event unfolded and I'm walking around with a glass of champagne and talking to people and the caterers are walking by the people are walking by with little appetizers and things and little tiny pancakes rolled up with little pieces of something or other and then they always have something with little caviar things and little wonton wrapper things and all kinds of little stuff and then the champagne and then eventually dinner started and it was a pretty nice dinner and I was talking with various people and then the desserts finally started coming out and then the dinner was served in the dining room and then you'd walk around the table in the dining room and I tried out a slice of small tiny piece of you know roast beef and various things and then the desserts

[35:28]

were being served finally in the solarium and in the solarium I noticed like my god there's about 12 or 15 different desserts here and I didn't see any of mine and I had been told that the caterers were going to serve the desserts so I started investigating and the caterers said oh he's in charge of desserts well he was one of the people from one of the other restaurants and he was serving his desserts and then Nancy Oakes and her crew were downstairs and they had these huge tables downstairs and they were serving their desserts and they didn't just make one dessert they decided to bring their whole pastry menu from the boulevard so there's dozens of desserts out here and then people are serving themselves desserts and I'm wandering around thinking like oh my god I've got all this trouble and then it was really embarrassing to have that fit this afternoon now on top of that the desserts are getting served and I've gone to all this effort nobody's going to eat the full things anyway then I had exactly the opposite reaction not that they're going to be eaten but they won't be eaten so

[36:34]

I'm wandering around rather bereft and not knowing what to do and trying to find Ronnie my friend to ask her could she see that the caterers actually do serve my desserts the way you told me that they would and Dianne Weinstein comes up to me and she says is something wrong? are you okay? is there anything I can do? do you need some help with something? just tell me what can I do? what is it? and I just couldn't imagine finally saying to my senator could you see that my desserts get served? there's just been stuff in the papers this is when the Chinese fundraising and stuff is going on and people are on contributions and who knows what I don't follow all that but I'm thinking oh and then somebody sent me a little thing a little postcard that I should send on to Dianne about how you're supporting somebody's dump site that's radioactive, toxic and you shouldn't be doing that I resent the fact that you would be supporting that

[37:38]

in a very impolitely worded kind of thing that we send to our politicians anyway eventually they served half a tray of my desserts in the dining room half the people had already left and the other half of the people were sitting there standing around with their dessert plates with five desserts already on them so then at that point I picked up the rest of my desserts my four dessert trays and I took them out to my car and I said goodbye to a couple of people and I went home and I had four and a half trays of desserts left so a lot of my friends had a lot of dessert to eat for a few days and then for a few days I was thinking is this the story of my life tremendous effort and then nobody cares it doesn't take much does it to color everything and then suppose it was the story of your life then what would you do and that probably is the story of your life

[38:40]

or maybe everything you do radiates out vastly into the universe whether anybody eats it or not you could just make butter sculptures and put them on the altar and then take them off or whatever I don't know I don't know how all this stuff works anyway this is what happens if you start to all kinds of things happen if you start to follow and ask your body and being just to do stuff and then all kinds of things go wrong I'm sorry but then if you don't do all that all those things go wrong anyway and I just personally find it more interesting for me to ask my body and being to see what it likes to do and to find out instead of trying to figure it out ahead of time and tell it so this is how I came to write a book

[39:41]

because this is the way I live I don't decide ahead of time I'm going to write a book but something in me starts doing it and then after a while I decide oh do you like that? are you interested in that sort of thing? oh okay go for it so I try to give myself a fair amount of permission and at the same time one side is giving a lot of permission and the other side is cutting that off the hands watch yourself this is a very complicated business this life not so easy to give yourself permission and not hurt anybody so good luck fellas and guys and gals and interesting it's very interesting but our culture has a habit

[40:44]

and especially for men you're supposed to make everything look easy and you don't really have problems you really things are okay and even if you get cancer or whatever it's not supposed to be a problem what's wrong with me? I'm worried about my cancer and you're not supposed to have much of a hard time at anything so this is a big handicap we have not letting anybody see how much trouble we're having how painful it is how difficult it is and trying to make everything look completely easy oh no I don't have trouble oh no I don't have trouble so I've never been able to manage that business of not having trouble so everybody, mostly people know just how much trouble I'm having and then only a few people stick around after that

[41:45]

you you find out who your friends are pretty fast that way so anyway I'm not saying you should practice like me I'm just saying you should find your way and just suggesting that you might want to give yourself a little permission and give your own being a little chance to find out for itself give your hands a chance to find out how to be hands don't tell them how to be hands and this is, you know, in Zen I mean this is liberation you liberate your hands by inviting them to be hands and to find out how to be hands and find out how to do what they love to do and your hands know much better how to be hands than your mind, your brain your thought, your thinking well I've probably talked long enough do you have some things you want to talk about? yeah well there's two reasons one reason is I didn't make the bottom thick enough

[42:49]

and I was working with a different size pan and I measured out the first one and if I had been doing it I would have figured it out pretty soon and I got it out and I thought it was about right and then I told the woman a number I said put on four cups but actually I put on four and a half cups and I should have said put on four and a half to five cups of this stuff to spread out on the pan and then it would have been a little thicker so one thing it wasn't thick enough and I hadn't worked with that size pan before and then I, if I was doing it it would have been fine but I'm telling somebody else to do it and then she's doing what I tell her and she's not doing like she's made the dessert a lot of times before and she knows how thick it should be so it should have been thicker one, and then I pre-baked the crust and I didn't pre-bake the crust enough because if you pre-bake it if you don't pre-bake it enough then when you put the rhubarb on the goo from the rhubarb sinks in and then the crust part gets all wet and then because it's wet it starts to stick to the spatula if it's drier it doesn't stick to the spatula so it wasn't thick enough and it wasn't pre-baked enough before the rhubarb went on

[43:51]

that'll do it yeah is that right? uh huh uh huh there you have it there you have it are you ever going to make that dessert again? yeah I did make that dessert again actually it's quite a good dessert and everybody who ate it said it was really wonderful it just didn't look great when the time came and you know it doesn't matter if it doesn't look great when you're at home it only matters when it's being compared to the best that the chic restaurants have to offer yes you said something about why we don't allow our body parts to express themselves or they know how to ask there's the wish not to harm because Buddhism doesn't just make these things up

[44:54]

like not harming we actually if we're honest and we haven't been gotten all confused by various experiences in our life we know well I don't really want to hurt others I don't want to cause suffering to others and just as I don't want to be hurt I wish not to hurt others so just to be on the safe side then usually we get over contained whether it's containing our literally our physical body containing our thoughts containing our voice so then we get we over do it usually just to be on the safe side and that's you know maybe it's not so bad for society as a whole we're in the business of studying how to come into our own and how to express ourselves you know and how to realize ourselves how to have the treasure store open and you know spend it freely so there's hazards to this business and we're trying to find out how to go from being overly contained to how to spend our treasure house

[45:54]

and you know how to express what's in our heart and what's in our being in a way that actually works with others and you know is you know appropriate and useful and you know supports and benefits others and ourselves I have a case of like you said when something touches your heart like the example of falling in love and then at the time I'm thinking you know that there is going to be pain and hurt and betrayal and all that there you go but you go anyway yes that's right yeah so so that's part of the deal you know that's why you know to fall in love is to you have to be vulnerable and it's a risk and and then you know sometimes then we decide because it was you know we have such painful experiences sometimes then we just say well

[46:56]

I'm never going to be that vulnerable again and then we try to figure out a life where we can get through never being that vulnerable again and then we wonder why is it so dry or you know why does nothing touch me well probably because you decided things weren't going to touch you ever again so anyway this is our study you know how to be open and have things touch us and and what we can trust in our experience and where we don't just and then you know again you know that something touches you at the core but there's actually still how you articulate that at the surface how you work with it you know just because something touches you in your core then you know that's a study and then how does your body what does your body do with that actually

[47:56]

you know and what one of the things that of course that Zen and Buddhism generally emphasizes is you know don't depend on the object and the control of your experience to you know for being touched at the core you know don't think it's a particular person and don't think it's a particular object and don't think it's a particular experience that's going to elicit that experience in you just practice doing that and don't be dependent on particular objects to touch you at the core just practice being touched you want to be touched then practice that and then you have some freedom and you don't and you don't you know have addiction you know to some particular object or person or thing to elicit that feeling in you and it's very independent to depend on a person or anything to to do that for you this is part of the problem then you get mad at the other person you're not doing that for me anymore like you used to

[48:58]

so you know we practice you know we're trying to find out among other things you know how to let many things touch you so for me you know I let food touch me and food is pretty safe you know you can put a radish in your mouth and be touched it's a lot simpler than you know some person who walks up to you so I had a lot of practice with vegetables before I worked my way up to people something else was my talk today just confusing or what well anyway if it was then you know in a while we'll chant or whatever you know you can let the sound of the traffic wash your ears clear yes oh no it wasn't what she

[50:05]

criticized me about it's the way that she is I'm not supposed to talk about you know I'm not supposed to be telling everybody about like who she is and what she does and she'd like a little privacy in that you know it's not her criticizing me I can tell you that part at some point I just have to remember like because then she meets all these people and says oh we heard all about you from your dad and after a while you know I try to restrain myself now as far as that goes excuse me no I have lots of great stories about my dad and interestingly enough I have found she's 24 now and she was working in Europe after graduating from college and then she came to live with us this last February and it's been really nice and something in me has shifted where I'm actually willing to be with her and have her you know just have her there and I realized

[51:05]

oh gosh you know for so many years I was in you know so preoccupied with my own pain and unhappiness and just kind of kept her over there not wanting her to get too close so that's been really nice anyway any other questions comments yeah I've got some rhubarb in my refrigerator oh you do a lot of times I'll buy that when it comes in season yeah it's a great season this is the time for it but sometimes it sits there until it rots oh uh huh and sometimes when I cook it you cook it and it melts right yeah rhubarb goo oh I don't thicken it I just cook it longer until it thickens first of all don't put any water in when you cook it

[52:05]

don't add water when you go to cook it so when you first start cooking it you put a lid on and maybe just a tiny bit of water but if you have it on low heat all kinds of water comes out of the rhubarb and so then after the water's all out of the rhubarb I take the lid off the pot so then the steam can and I just cook it on low heat for about another hour and then it gets thicker and thicker and thicker and then I season it you know I sweeten it and put in a lemon or orange or vanilla extract and in my rhubarb strawberry tart I was putting a little tiny bit of anise seed that was so interesting and you know I tell everybody to taste it after each ingredient it was amazing how a tiny bit of anise seed or you know a tiny bit of vanilla extract and it just tastes much sweeter even though you haven't added sugar and the same with the anise seed it's very fascinating to me how much things can change with one little ingredient yeah

[53:07]

yeah I wasn't there so I can't tell you much about it you'll have to ask somebody who was there yeah I just wrote a new cooking book and if you want to get it tonight I'm going to sign books in the dining room too afterwards and it's a book about it's stories and recipes there's about 45 stories in there stories about 15 of them are about experiences with Suzuki Roshi and it's about my cooking at Tassajara and you know various things I also have one story in there it's a story about eating just one potato chip and Sunday at Green Gulch we performed this as a ceremony in the Zendo and you know it was kids day at Green Gulch so the first 10 or 15 minutes

[54:13]

all these 20 kids or so so I told them today we're going to we're going to have we're going to do a very rarely performed ceremony it's so rare it's never been done here before in the Zendo and it's the ceremony of eating just one potato chip before I mentioned the ceremony I said so you know the ceremony is the outer form and then also the willing participation of everyone are you willing and you need to do your best and are you willing to do your best and they said yes we are and so then I told them it was the ceremony of eating just one potato chip and when I got to the part where I said eating this one potato chip is the most important thing in the world this one kid said you're crazy in a loud voice and I said that's why yes you're right I am crazy and that's why this is a ceremony because everybody knows in everyday life

[55:14]

eating a potato chip is not so important but for the sake of the ceremony we are suspending ordinary reality and we are going to take on the belief and understanding and practice that eating this chip is the most important thing in the whole universe and I thought that maybe some of the people and I told them some of you may have to do the practice of not eating one potato chip but it turned out that one 14 ounce bag of potato chips there was enough for the whole center there whatever you know two or three hundred people and there were chips left over yeah it's pretty amazing it was staggering so then you know I explained to them to eat one potato chip concentration attention and mindfulness concentration not to have distractions it was pretty easy there there was no television or mass media no people magazine no cocktail glasses no dip nobody to talk to

[56:15]

they were already practicing silence so you got the concentration part down pretty well in terms of not being distracted and then I encouraged them to attune their attention you have to attune your attention to the chip because usually we're attending to what we think is really important so that's where you have to understand that this for the sake of the ceremony that's the important point and then mindfulness to note that the experience actually mindfulness technically speaking it's nice because it's a cooking term technically speaking mindfulness has to be whipped up it helps to whip up your mindfulness to whip it up means that your mindfulness is aroused so that your experience actually registers it impacts it has an impact on your awareness on your consciousness so you whip up one of the ways to whip up mindfulness is to make little notes

[57:15]

about what it is that you're experiencing crunchy salty, greasy and so on in the sound hearing the sensations of swallowing various things so this is a very difficult ceremony to do at home I considered doing it for you tonight but I don't know these things only go so far I think I'm going to keep this one rare a rarely performed ceremony so you can try it if you want but I don't think you can do it at home you might, you know, you probably will end up eating more than one well that was interesting, I'd better try that again so you usually need the support of a group anyway so there's various kinds of stories in the book alright, thank you

[58:17]

that's it

[58:19]

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